Russell Newton explores Daniel Walters’ twice daily gratitude practice and explains how this technique can change your life through stress relief and better habits. Learn the simple yet powerful method of writing down three things you’re grateful for every morning and evening as part of your morning routine. Discover real-life examples from guests like Margaret Cochran and Debbie Dobbins. Subscribe for more audiobook techniques that work.

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:41 Why Gratitude Is Important
1:50 Walter’s Simple Approach
3:24 Walter’s Book Insights
4:27 Purposeful Happiness Techniques
5:39 Matthew Hill’s Influence Through Gratitude
6:47 Gratitude Defined By Faulkner

Join Russell Newton as he guides you through powerful gratitude practices that can change your life. From morning routines to evening reflections, learn how practicing gratitude twice daily with techniques like meditation and journaling can not only build better habits but also provide stress relief and enhance your mindset framework for personal development. Don’t miss out on the transformative power of gratitude with Russell Eric Newton!

You wake up and you’re already behind, stressed before your feet hit the floor, running the day’s problems before you even had coffee.
Every mindset book tells you to just think positive, but almost none of them tell you what that actually looks like at 6am on a Tuesday.
So today, we’re doing something different.
I pulled techniques straight out of a book on building better habits and I went back through my own interview archive to find real people actually living them out loud, in their own words, not mine.
Before we get to technique, it’s worth asking why gratitude gets top billing in almost every mindset framework at all.
I put that question to Debbie Dobbins who’s written two full chapters in her book on gratitude alone.
And here’s how she put it.
Gratitude is the gateway to everything.
I can’t say that enough.
So even if the roof is falling down and you don’t have the money, the first thing you have to do, and this is probably gonna, everybody’s gonna go, oh, that’s impossible, is you have to be grateful.
You have to be grateful.
This is the situation that I’m in.
What do I do next?
Because once you’re grateful, then you can begin to see potential impossibilities.
That’s the why.
Gratitude isn’t a nice to have bolted onto a mindset.
It’s the thing that has to come first.
before the fix, before the plan.
So, what does that actually look like as a daily habit?
Well, that’s where today’s book from Daniel Walters gets specific.
Walter keeps it almost stupidly simple.
Twice a day, no exceptions.
First thing when he wakes up, last thing before he sleeps.
A journal and a pen right on the bedstand.
Three things written down every time.
And he sits with the feeling for a few minutes before moving on.
That’s the whole practice.
No app, no street counter, just paper and repetition.
So reading a technique on a page is one thing.
Hearing someone actually do it out loud mid conversation is another.
This is Margaret Cochran.
And I want you to notice this isn’t a description of the practice.
It is the practice happening in real time.
So it’s an abbreviated process, but the important things for me and that I teach people are, one, have a gratitude practice every single day, twice a day, go through what you’re grateful for.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be anything huge.
It can be your favorite purple dinosaur socks.
Just, I’m so happy and grateful I have these socks.
I’m so happy and grateful I got to be on your podcast.
I’m so happy and grateful that you’re such a lovely man.
I’m so happy and grateful for all the people that we’re reaching today, you know, that kind of thing.
Notice what she’s actually doing.
She’s not just thinking, I’m grateful.
She’s saying it out loud about things as small as a pair of socks.
That’s not filler.
And Walter’s book backs this up, too.
He says the technique that made laughter therapy and gratitude actually work for him wasn’t believing it quietly.
It was practicing it audibly, repeatedly, until it became automatic.
Here’s a piece of his book that surprises people.
Walter puts laughter right next to gratitude as a trained habit.
not just something that happens to you.
As Daniel Walter put it, laughter is the medicine to the soul.
Now, he’s not just being poetic.
There is a real mechanism behind it.
Laughter relaxes the body, increases oxygen intake, and triggers endorphins, which is why it also functions as a legitimate stress and pain reliever.
His advice, it’s embarrassingly practical.
put on your favorite comedian, read some jokes.
Whatever reliably gets you there on purpose, not just when it happens to you.
This last piece is the hardest one to catch in yourself, the running conversation in your own head.
Walter’s answer is something called thought replacement.
Catch the negative line and immediately swap it for a specific, deliberate one.
As he says, you are what you think and you will become exactly what you focus on.
Matthew Hill in our interview took this even further.
He doesn’t just replace a thought once.
He treats self-talk like a rehearsal you run on purpose out loud before you need it.
Do feel free to do a good, positive self-audit and love it.
Maybe record it and play it back to yourself.
So sort of forms of affirmation.
So that’s the now.
And then just go three steps forward about your effectiveness, your charisma, your courage, your influencing skills.
I can influence my team.
I can get them to do so much more.
I can get the whole person to come to work next week.
You haven’t, you don’t, but you will and you can.
So we’re a bit, we’re a couple of heads, we’re a couple of chapters ahead in your leadership and charismatic development.
So there’s the the core, which is real, and there’s the add-on, which is a sort of wish list.
And both are fine.
And your brain won’t really differentiate between the two.
So an affirmation tape, an ambition list, a purpose list.
You know, a bit of Simon Sinek in my why is I want to help a million people too.
Gratitude, laughter, self-talk.
None of these are complicated ideas.
People who actually change with them are the ones who stopped treating them as things to believe and started treating them as things to practice out loud on repeat.
Daniel Wolter’s Habits for Success walks through this technique by technique if you want the full version.
As William Faulkner put it, gratitude is a quality similar to electricity.
It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.
If this is the kind of thing that’s useful to you, subscribe.
I’ve got a lot more of these audiobook techniques paired with real people actually living them.